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Derek Loosvelt

Derek Loosvelt is Vault's senior finance editor. Derek has a BS in economics from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and an MFA in creative writing from the New School. His writing has appeared in several online and print publications. Previously, he worked in investment banking as an M&A analyst and associate.

All Posts by Derek Loosvelt

It's that time of year again: when private equity firms start
poaching investment banking analysts with less than 10 months of
experience on the job. "These kids don't even know where the
restroom is yet," a recruiting coordinator at one of the big U.S.
banking firms told me recently, "and they're already signing
contracts to leave." PE poachers aside, Wall Street banks have
bigger problems on their hands: they're losing talent to the tech
industry. Some of this talent is leaving after...
Read More >

Interviews are stressful, fear-inducing, sweat-inducing, mostly
unpleasant affairs. And so, when you're on the other side of the
desk-in the interviewer's seat-you shouldn't forget this. That is,
when interviewing someone, you should treat your interviewee like
you'd want to be treated if you were the one being interviewed. To
that end, I found the below advice about how to best begin an
interview that you're conducting to be both relieving (to the
interviewee in me) and right on (to the...
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For better or worse, we can now work anywhere. We carry smartphones
and tablets with us everywhere. There's nowhere our employers and
clients can't reach us. And there's nowhere we can't reach our
employers and clients. Some of us like this arrangement. We can get
home in time to have dinner with our children. We can meet our
significant others and Tinder dates for happy hour. We can attend
our daughter's basketball games, our friends' engagement parties.
However, some of us don't like to...
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If you've been following the NCAA Basketball Tournament, you know
that there are only four teams left. This means that 64 of the 68
teams selected to play in the tournament have lost, and thus, in
some way, 64 teams have failed. Soon, three teams of the so-called
Final Four will also lose and thus will also fail. Which means that
67 teams or approximately 1,340 people (each team includes about 15
players and five coaches) will experience some level of failure
when the final shining moment...
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A new study by McKinsey and LeanIn.org unsurprisingly shows that women are still severely underrepresented at tech firms throughout the country and that the (few) women already at tech firms believe their gender is holding them back from promotions.
The Wall Street Journal recently published an Read More >

Marcelo Barros is a University of Oregon graduate originally from Brazil. In the U.S., he’s worked for Lucent Technologies and Cisco Systems, among other firms, and as a career coach for international students. Drawing on two decades of experience, Barros recently wrote Read More >

First Wall Street told young bankers that they didn't have to work
on weekends. Then they told them they'd never have to work past
midnight. Now they're giving them an entire year off. Attitudes
toward young bankers have shifted so strongly on Wall Street that
Citigroup Inc. has a new plan to keep them happy: Give them a year
off. The bank on Wednesday plans to unveil new programs meant to
appeal to younger
Read More >

In the past few years, there have been several high-profile employment migrations from Wall Street to Silicon Valley. In 2014, Anthony Soto left Goldman Sachs to become Twitter's CFO. In 2015, Ruth Porat left Read More >

Sarah Tavel's career path from Harvard graduate to first female partner at one of the biggest swinging Silicon Valley venture capital firms is an inspiring one. Tavel, recently featured as one of Paper magazine's I.T. It Girls, says that one of the secrets to her success is being "open to the fact that you don't know." Another is knowing the questions, not the answers.
Read More >

One of the wildest developments in this very wild election year has
been the death of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. And the
question Who will succeed him? is one that's looking more and more
like it will be heatedly debated right up until the final vote is
cast on the first Tuesday this November. Of course, the importance
of Scalia's successor is far reaching. With the SCOTUS now locked
at 4 vs. 4 (four conservatives and four liberals), the person to
take Scalia's place will likely...
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